Following on our previous coverage, Cingular has confirmed plans to launch their own music store. The Wall Street Journal has confirmed that Cingular’s new Music Store will tap Windows Media PlaysForSure DRM. This is in-line with the former AT&T Wireless’ mMode Music Store, which also uses PlaysForSure.
Like the mMode Music Store, Cingular’s Music Store will not function as an OTA service at launch. The service will function similar to existing iTunes Mobile phones, and require the user to connect their phone to a Windows Media Player PC for transferring music.
Reports indicate that Cingular will launch built-in OTA support later, once they integrate PFS support into phones. Verizon is able to pervasively deploy PFS support through the BREW platform. Sprint also uses a variant of PFS encryption, made possible through the use of Sprint’s MIDP 2.0 extensions that Sprint mandated in all devices.
